Chapter XV: Part VI: They Sang (11)

The book contains ancient lives of Irish saints, written in very pure Gaelic; the conquests of Charlemagne, translated from Archbishop Turpin’s celebrated romance of the VIIIth century; the conversion of the Pantheon into a Christian church; the stories of David, son of Jesse, the two children, Samhain, the three sons of Cleirac; the _Imtheacht na trom daimhé_; the story of S. Peter’s daughter Petronilla and the discovery of the Sibylline Oracle; an account of S. Gregory the Great; the Empress Justina’s heresy; modifications of minor ceremonies of the Mass; accounts of the successors of Charlemagne, and of the correspondence between Lanfranc and the clergy of Rome; extracts from Marco Polo’s _Travels_; accounts of Irish battles and sieges; and a dialogue between S. Patrick, Caoilté, Mac Ronain, and Oisin (Ossian), the son of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, in which many hills, rivers, caverns, etc., in Ireland, are described, and the etymology of their names recorded. This last is preluded by an account of the departure of Oisin and Caoilté on a hunting expedition, during which their gillie sees and is much troubled by a very strange spectacle. As this tale furnishes a good example of the contents of these ancient books, we subjoin a translation of the commencement of it.(58)

“On a certain time it happened that Oisin and Cailte were in Dun Clithar (the sheltered or shady Dun) at Slieve Crott. It was the time that Patrick came to Ireland. It is there dwelt a remnant of the Fenians, namely, Oisin and Cailte and three times nine persons in their company. They followed this custom: about nine persons went out hunting daily. On a certain day it chanced that Cailte Mac Ronain set out with eight persons (big men) and a boy (gilla), the ninth. The way they went was northward to the twelve mountains of Eibhlinné and to the head of the ancient Moy Breogan. On their returning from the chase at the cheerless close of the day they came from the north to Corroda Cnamhchoill. Then was Fear Gair Cailte’s gilla loaded with the choice parts of the chase in charge, because he had no care beyond that of Cailte himself, from whom he took wages. The gilla comes to the stream, and takes Cailte’s cup from his back and drinks a drink of the stream. Whilst the gilla was thus drinking the eight great men went their way southward, mistaking the road, and the gilla following afterwards. Then was heard the noise of the large host, and the gilla proceeds to observe the multitude; bushes and a bank between them. He saw in the fore front of the crowd a strange band; it seemed to him one hundred and fifty were in this band. They appeared thus: robes of pure white linen upon them, a head chief with them, and bent standards in their hands; shields, broad‐streaked with gold and silver, bright shining on their breasts; their faces pale, pitiably feminine, and having masculine voices, and every man of them humming a march. The gilla followed his people, and did not overtake them till he came to the hunting‐booth, and he came possessed, as he thinks, with the news of the strange troop he had seen, and casts his burden on the ground, goes round it, places his elbows under, and groans very loudly. It was then that Cailte Mac Ronain said: ‘Well, gilla, is it the weight of your burden affects you?’ ‘Not so,’ replied the gilla; ‘when is large the burden, so great is the wages you give to me. This does not affect me; but that wonderful multitude I saw at the hut of Cnamhchoill. The first band that I saw of that strange crowd filled me with the pestilent, heavy complaint of the news of this band.’ ‘Give its description,’ said Cailte. ‘There seemed to me an advanced guard of one hundred and fifty‐six men, pure white robes upon them, a head leader to them, bent standards in their hands, broad shields on their breasts, having feminine faces and masculine voices, and every single man of them humming a march.’ Wonder seized the old Fenian on hearing this. ‘These are they,’ said Oisin—‘the Tailginn (holy race), foretold by our Druids and Fionn to us, and what can be done with them? Unless they be slain, they shall ascend over us altogether.’ ‘Uch!’ said Oisin, ‘who amongst us can molest them? For we are the last of the Fenii, and not with ourselves is the power in Erinn, nor the greatness, nor pleasure but in the chase, and as ancient exiles asserting the right,’ said he; and they remained so till came the next morning, and there was nothing on their minds that night but these (things). Cailte rose early the fore front of the day, being the oldest of them, and came out on the assembly‐mound. The sun cleared the fog from the plains, and Cailte said: ...”

The procession thus described as having been seen by the gillie was probably one of ecclesiastics, with S. Patrick himself at their head, on the saint’s first arrival in Ireland.

The foregoing sketches of certain of the MSS., extracts from which are intended to appear in the series of fac‐similes, may serve to convey an idea of how rich Ireland is in such national records, what an immense mass of historical and romantic literature her libraries contain, and how great is their antiquity. Besides the evidence afforded by these books, both as to the ancient social, political, and ecclesiastical history of Ireland, and its topography, the books themselves are found to be full of illustrations of the customs, mode of life, manners, and costume of her early Celtic inhabitants; often conveyed through the medium of charming legends and fairy tales.

Annals Of The Moss‐Troopers.

Outlawry was never carried to a greater degree of systematic organization, or practised on a larger and more dignified scale, than during the centuries of Border warfare between the English and Scottish chieftains. The only parallel to this warfare was furnished by the raids of the Free Companions in mediæval Italy; but the mercenary element in the organization of those formidable bodies of professional marauders destroys the interest which we might otherwise have felt in their daring feats of arms. The warfare of the Border was essentially a national outburst; the “moss‐troopers,” although trained soldiers, were also householders and patriarchs. Their stake in the country they alternately plundered and defended was a substantial one. The field of their prowess was never far from home. Each retainer, insignificant as he might be, humble as his position in the troop might be, had yet a personal interest in the raid; and revenge, as well as plunder, was the avowed object of an expedition. There was never any changing of allegiance from one side to the other; the tie of blood and clanship welded the whole troop into one family. The Border, or debatable land between the rival kingdoms of England and Scotland, bristled with strongholds, all of historical name and fame: Newark and Branxholm (which Sir Walter Scott in his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ has euphonized into Branksome), held by the all‐powerful Scotts of Buccleugh; Crichtoun Castle, the successive property of the Crichtouns, the Bothwells, and the Buccleughs, and, while in the hands of its original owners, the haughty defier of King James III. of Scotland; Gifford or Yester (it bears either name indifferently), famous for its Hobgoblin Hall, or, as the people call it, “Bo‐Hall,” a large cavern formed by magical art; Tantallon Hold, the retreat of the Douglas, in which the family held out manfully against James V. until its chief, the Earl of Angus, was recalled from exile. Of this expedition it is related that the king marched in person upon the castle, and, to reduce it, borrowed from the neighboring Castle of Dunbar two great cannons whose names were “Thrawn‐mouthed Meg and her Marrow”; also two great _bolcards_, and two _moyan_, two double falcons and two quarter‐falcons, for the safe guiding and redelivery of which “three lords were laid in pawn at Dunbar.” Notwithstanding all this mighty preparation, the king was forced to raise the siege. The ruin of Tantallon was reserved for the Covenanters, and now there remains nothing of it save a few walls standing on a high rock overlooking the German Ocean and the neighboring town of Berwick‐upon‐ Tweed. Ford Castle, the patrimony of the Herons, had a better fate, and stands in altered and modernized guise, the centre of civilizing and peaceful influences, the residence of a model Lady of the Manor, overlooking, not the wild ocean, but a pretty village, faultlessly neat, and a Gothic school filled with frescos of Bible subjects, executed by the Lady Bountiful, the benefactress of the neighborhood. Yet Ford Castle had a stormy, stirring past, and stands not far from the historic field of Flodden, where tradition says that, but for the tardiness of the king’s movements—an effect due to the siren charms of Lady Ford—James IV. might have been victorious. In the castle is still shown the room where the king slept the night before the battle, and only five or six miles away lies the fatal field, on which, _Marmion_ in hand the curious traveller may still make out each knoll, the Bridge of Twisel, by which the English under Surrey crossed the Till, the hillock commanding the rear of the English right wing, which was defeated, and in conflict with whom Scott’s imaginary hero, Marmion, is supposed to have fallen.

Very curious are the accounts of the various fights and forays given by the chroniclers of the middle ages, especially in their utter unconsciousness of anything unusual or derogatory in this almost internecine warfare. Their simplicity in itself presents the key to the situation. In reading their graphic, matter‐of‐fact descriptions, one needs to transport one’s self into a totally different atmosphere. We must read these racy accounts in the same spirit in which they were written, if we would understand aright the age in which our forefathers lived. We are not called upon to sit in judgment over the irrevocable past, but to study it as a fact not to be overlooked, and a useful storehouse of warning or example. The possession of the king’s person was sometimes the origin of terrible clan‐feuds among the warlike Scottish imitators of the Frankish “Maires du Palais.” Thus, on one occasion, in 1526, the chronicler Pitscottie informs us that James V., then a minor, had fallen under the self‐assumed guardianship of the Earl of Angus, backed by his own clan of Douglas and his allies, the Lairds of Hume, Cessfoord, and Fernyhirst, the chiefs of the clan of Kerr.(59) “The Earl of Angus and the rest of the Douglases ruled all which they liked, and no man durst say the contrary.” The king, who wished to get out of their hands, sent a secret letter to Scott of Buccleugh, warden of the West Marches of Scotland, praying him to gather his kin and friends, meet the Douglas at Melrose, and deliver him (James) from his vassal’s power. The loyal Scot gathered about six hundred spears, and came to the tryst. When the Douglases and Kerrs saw whom they had to deal with, they said to the king, “Sir, yonder is Buccleugh, and thieves of Annandale with him, to unbeset your grace from the gate (_i.e._, interrupt your passage). I vow to God they shall either fight or flee, and ye shall tarry here on this know (knoll), and I shall pass and put yon thieves off the ground, and rid the gate unto your grace, or else die for it.” Scant courtesy in speech used those Border heroes towards one another! So an escort tarried to guard the king, and the rest of the clans went forward to the field of Darnelinver now Darnick, near Melrose. The place of conflict is still called Skinner’s Field, a corruption of Skirmish Field. The chronicler tells us that Buccleugh “joyned and countered cruelly both the said parties ... with uncertain victory. But at the last the Lord Hume, hearing word of that matter, how it stood, returned again to the king in all possible haste, with him the Lairds of Cessfoord and Fernyhirst, to the number of fourscore spears, and set freshly on the lap and wing of the Laird of Buccleugh’s field, and shortly bare them backward to the ground, which caused the Laird of Buccleugh and the rest of his friends to go back and flee, whom they followed and chased; and especially the Lairds of Cessfoord and Fernyhirst followed furiouslie, till at the foot of a path the Laird of Cessfoord was slain by the stroke of a spear by one Elliott, who was then servant to the Laird of Buccleugh. But when the Laird of Cessfoord was slain, the chase ceased.” The Borders were infested for many long years afterwards by marauders of both sides, who kept up a deadly hereditary feud between the names of Scott and Kerr, and finally, after having been imprisoned and had his estates forfeited nine years later for levying war against the Kerrs, the bold Buccleugh was slain by his foes in the streets of Edinburgh in 1552, twenty‐six years after the disastrous fight in which he had failed to rescue his sovereign. It was seventy years before this Border feud was finally quelled.

On the English side of the Marches the same dare‐devilry existed, the same speed in gathering large bodies of men was used, the same quickness in warning and rousing the neighborhood. Equal enthusiasm was displayed whether the case were one of “lynch law” or of political intrigue, as in the fight at Darnelinver. Sir Robert Carey, in his _Memoirs_, describes his duties as deputy warden for his brother‐in‐law, Lord Scroop. The castle was near Carlisle. “We had a stirring time of it,” he says, “and few days passed over my head but I was on horseback, either to prevent mischief or take malefactors, and to bring the Border in better quiet than it had been in times past.” Hearing that two Scotchmen had killed a churchman in Scotland, and were dwelling five miles from Carlisle on the English side of the Border, under the protection of the Graemes, Carey took about twenty‐five horsemen with him, and invested the Graeme’s house and tower. As they did so, a boy rode from the house at full speed, and one of his retainers, better versed in Border warfare than the chief, told him that in half an hour that boy would be in Scotland to let the people know of the danger of their countrymen and the small number of those who had come from Carlisle to arrest them. “Hereupon,” says our author, “we took advice what was best to be done. We sent notice presently to all parts to raise the country, and to come to us with all the speed they could; and withal we sent to Carlisle to raise the townsmen, for without foot we could do no good against the tower. There we stayed some hours, expecting more company, and within a short time after the country came in on all sides, so that we were quickly between three and four hundred horse; and after some longer stay, the foot of Carlisle came to us, to the number of three or four hundred men, whom we presently set to work to get to the top of the tower, and to uncover the roof, and then some twenty of them to fall down together, and by that means to win the tower. The Scots, seeing their present danger, offered to parley, and yielded themselves to my mercy.” But the victorious Carlisleans had reckoned without their host. From the hills and defiles around came pouring wild‐looking mountaineers on rough, wiry ponies, farm‐horses, etc., to the number of four hundred. The prisoners ceased their pleading, and looked eagerly towards their deliverers. Meanwhile, the men of “merry Carlisle”(60) gave their perplexed chief more trouble than his enemies, who “stood at gaze” a quarter of a mile from him; for, says he, “all our Borderers came crying with full mouths, ‘Sir, give us leave to set upon them; for these are they that have killed our fathers, our brothers and uncles, and our cousins, and they are coming, thinking to surprise you with weak grass nags, such as they could get on a sudden; and God hath put them into your hands, that we may take revenge of them for much blood that they have spilt of ours.’ ” The warden was a conscientious man, and had come here to execute justice against two malefactors, not to encourage indiscriminate private revenge; but even with his rank and vested authority he did not dare sternly to forbid a faction fight. He only told them that, had he not been there, they might have done as best pleased them; but that, since he was present, he should feel that all the blood spilt that day would be upon his own head, and for his sake he entreated them to forbear. “They were ill‐satisfied,” he adds, “but durst not disobey.” So he sent word to the Scots to disperse, which they did, probably because they were unprepared to fight such a large and well‐disciplined force, having expected to find but a handful of men. The necessity for delicate handling of this armed mob of English Borderers points sufficiently to the curious standard of personal justice which prevailed in those wild times. And yet, strange to say, while a Border “ride” (_alias_ foray) was a thing of such ordinary occurrence that a saying is recorded of a mother to her son which soon became proverbial: “_Ride, Rowley, hough’s i’ the pot_”—that is, the last piece of beef is in the pot, and it is high time to go and fetch more—still it would sometimes happen, as it did to James V. of Scotland, that when an invasion of England was in contemplation, and the royal lances gathered at the place where the king’s lieges were to meet him, only one baron would declare himself willing to go wherever the sovereign might lead. This faithful knight was another of the loyal race of Scott—John Scott of Thirlestane, to whom James, in memory of his fidelity, granted the privilege set forth in the following curious and rare charter:

“... Ffor the quhilk (which) cause, it is our will, and we do straitlie command and charg our lion herauld, ... to give and to graunt to the said John Scott ane border of ffleure de lises about his coatte of armes, sic as is on our royal banner, and alsua ane bundle of lances above his helmet, with thir words, Readdy ay, Readdy, that he and all his after‐ cummers may bruik (carry?) the samine as a pledge and taiken of our guid will and kyndnes for his true worthiness.”

The list of the damages done in some of these Border rides sounds strange in modern ears. Each country was a match for the other, though the strong castles of Wark, Norham, and Berwick in English hands were thorns in the side of the Scottish Borderers. Rowland Foster of Wark, on the 16th of May, 1570, harried the barony of Blythe in Lauderdale, the property of Sir Richard Maitland, a blind knight of seventy‐four years of age. None of that country “lippened” (expected) such a thing, as it was in time of peace; and despite what may have been said—and truly—as to their lawlessness, the Borderers had a code by which to regulate their actions. The old man wrote a poetical account of the harrying, calling the poem the _Blind Baron’s Comfort_, and in the introduction he enumerates his losses: five thousand sheep, two hundred nolt, thirty horses and mares, and the whole furniture of his house, worth £8 6s. 8d., and everything else that was portable. The sum represents some forty dollars.

In these narratives one feels it impossible to be very sorry for either party, each was so thoroughly unable to take care of itself! Those who to‐ day seem down‐trodden victims of lawlessness will figure again a year hence as “stark moss‐troopers [moss for marsh] and arrant thieves; both to England and Scotland outlawed, yet sometimes connived at because they gave intelligence forth to Scotland, and would raise four hundred horse at any time upon a raid of the English into Scotland.” This was said of the Graemes, Earls of Monteith, but was applicable, _mutatis mutandis_, to most of the Borderers on both sides. An old Northumbrian ballad, that survived in the North of England till within a hundred years, and was commonly sung at merry‐makings till the roof rang again, gives forcible and rather coarse details as to the personal results of these forays. It celebrates the ride of the Thirlwalls and Ridleys in the reign of Henry VIII. against the Featherstons of Featherston Castle, a few miles south of the Tyne. Here is one of the rude stanzas:

“I canno’ tell a’, I canno’ tell a’,
Some gat a skelp (blow), and some gat a claw;
But they gard the Featherstons haud their jaw,
Nicol and ‘Alick and a’.
Some gat a hurt, and some gat nane;
Some had harness, and some gat sta’en (stolen or plundered).”

In later days Sir Walter Scott wove the annals of the Border into more tuneful rhyme, and sang of the exploits of his bold countrymen with an enthusiasm worthy of his moss‐trooping ancestors. These old ballads, and the recollections of ancient dames in whose youthful days the exploits celebrated in these ballads were not yet quite obsolete, furnished him with much of his romantic materials. _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, a collection of many such traditions, is a storehouse of information upon these subjects. We find descriptions of the caves and morasses which were the usual refuge of the marauders; the banks of the Teviot, the Ale, the Jed, the Esk, were full of these caverns, but even these hiding‐places were not always safe. Patten’s _Account of Somerset’s Expedition into Scotland_ tells how “George Ferres, a gentleman of my Lord Protector, happened on a cave” the entrance to which showed signs of the interior being tenanted. “He wente doune to trie, and was readilie receyved with a hakebut or two,” and when he found the foe determined to hold out, “he wente to my lorde’s grace, and, upon utterance of the thinge, _gat license to deale with them as he coulde_”—which significantly simple statement meant that he was perfectly at liberty to do as he eventually did, i.e., smother them by stopping up the three _ventes_ of the cave with burning faggots of damp wood.

The next case is one of national jealousy and instant reprisals. The English Earl of Northumberland gives a graphic account of the double raid in a letter to King Henry VIII. He says that some Scottish barons had threatened to come and give him “light to put on his clothes at midnight,” and moreover that Marke Carr (one of the same clan whose prowess was exercised against Buccleugh) said that, “seying they had a governor on the Marches of Scotland as well as they had in England, he shulde kepe your highness’ instructions, gyffyn unto your garyson, for making of any _day‐ forey_; for he and his friends _wolde burne enough on the nyght_....” Then follows a detailed account of the inroad of thirty horsemen on the hamlet of Whitell, which they did not burn, because “there was no fyre to get there, and they forgat to brynge any withe theyme!” But they killed a woman, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and departed. The reprisals, however, were far worse. The Earl of Murray, who had winked at all this, was chosen by the English as a scape‐goat, and a hundred of the best horsemen of Glendaill “dyd mar the Earl of Murreis provisions at Coldingham, for they did not only burn the said town of Coldingham, with all the corne thereunto belonging, but also burned twa townes nye adjoining thereunto, called Branerdergest and the Black Hill and took xxiii. persons, lx. horse, with cc. head of cataill, which nowe, as I am informed, hathe not only been a staye of the said Erle of Murreis not coming to the Bordure as yet, but alsoo that none inlande will adventure theyrself uppon the Marches.... And also I have devysed that within this iii. nyghts, _Godde willing_, Kelsey, in like case, shall be brent with all the corn in the said town, and then they shall have noo place to lye any garyson nygh unto the Borders.”

The physical strength and rude cunning required for this daring life of perpetual warfare are well described in the stanza of _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ referring to one of the Border heroes of the clan of Buccleugh:

“A stark, moss‐trooping Scott was he
As e’er couch’d Border lance by knee;
Through Solway sands, through Tarras moss,
Blindfold he knew the paths to cross;
By wily turns, by desperate bounds,
Had baffled Percy’s best bloodhounds;
In Eske or Liddel fords were none,
But he would ride them one by one;
Alike to him was time or tide,
December’s snow or July’s pride;
Alike to him was tide or time,
Moonless midnight or matin prime;
Steady of heart and stout of hand
As ever drove prey from Cumberland;
Five times outlaw’d had he been
By England’s king and Scotland’s queen.”

We have already alluded to the origin of the name of the Border riders. Fuller, in his _Worthies of England_, says they are called moss‐troopers “because dwelling in the mosses (marshes or morasses), and riding in troops together; they dwell in the bounds or meeting of the two kingdoms, but obey the laws of neither. They come to church as seldom as the 29th of February comes in the calendar.” Their customs and laws are even more interesting than the details of their forays. Loyalty to each other was their first principle, and on occasions when money could purchase the freedom of one of their number they invariably cast in their lots, and made up a large common purse. They were scrupulous in keeping their word of honor when passed to a traveller, and Fuller likens their dogged fidelity in these cases to that of a “Turkish janizary”; but otherwise, woe to him that fell into their hands! Their own _self_‐imposed laws they observed for the most part faithfully, and a breach of them was punished far more summarily than modern crimes in modern courts of law. Several species of offences peculiar to the Border constituted what was called March‐treason. Among others was the crime of riding or causing to ride against the opposite country (or clan) during the time of truce. Such was the offence committed by Rowland Foster in his raid on the “Blind Baron,” though in his case the criminal was probably too powerful to be punished. In one of the many truces signed in the olden time is one of 1334 between the Percys and the Douglases, in which it is accorded: “Gif ony stellis (steals) anthir on the ta part or on the tothyr, that he shall be hanget or beofdit (beheaded); and gif ony company stellis any gudes within the trieux (truce) beforesayd, are of that company shall be hanget or beofdit, and the remanant sail restore the gudys stolen in the dubble.”(61) In doubtful cases the innocence of Border criminals was often referred to their own oath. The same work that quotes the above agreement also gives us the form of excusing bills by Border oaths: “You shall swear by the heaven above you, hell beneath you, by your part of paradise, by all that God made in six days and seven nights, and by God himself, you are whart out sackless of art, part, way, witting, ridd kenning, having, or recetting of any of the goods and cattels named in the bill. So help you God.” It seems almost as if the Borderers had consulted the catechism as to the nine ways of being accessory to another’s sin, so minute is the nomenclature of treasonable possibilities.

Trial by single combat was also a favorite mode of clearing one’s self from a criminal charge. This was common in feudal times and throughout the XVIth century; but time stood still in the Borders, as far as civilizing changes were concerned, and even in the XVIIth century a ceremonious indenture was signed between two champions of name and position, binding them to fight to prove the truth or falsity of a charge of high treason made by one against the other.

The most ancient known collection of regulations for the Border sets forth that in 1468, on the 18th day of December, Earl William Douglas assembled the whole lords, freeholders, and eldest Borderers, that best knowledge had, at the College of Linclouden, “where he had them bodily sworn, the Holy Gospel touched, that they justlie and trulie after their cunning should decrete ... the statutes, ordinances, and uses of the marche.” The earl further on is said to have thought these “right speedful and profitable to the Borders.”

During the truces it was not unusual to have merry‐makings and fairs, to which, however, both Scotch and English came fully armed. Foot‐ball was from time immemorial a favorite Border game, but the national rivalry was such that the play often ended in bloodshed. Still, there was no personal ill‐feeling, and a rough sort of good‐fellowship was kept up, which was strengthened by intermarriages, and was not supposed to debar either party from the right of prosecuting private vengeance, even to death. When, however, this revenge had been taken, it would have been against Border etiquette to retain any further ill‐will. Patten, in his _Account of Somerset’s Expedition into Scotland_, remarks on the disorderly conduct of the English Borderers who followed the Lord Protector. He describes the camp as full of “troublous and dangerous noyses all the nyghte longe, ... more like the outrage of a dissolute huntynge than the quiet of a well‐ ordered armye.” The Borderers, like masterless hounds, howling, whooping, whistling, crying out “A Berwick, a Berwick! a Fenwick, a Fenwick! a Bulmer, a Bulmer!” paraded the camp, creating confusion wherever they went, and disturbing the more sober southern troops; they used their own slogan or battle‐cry out of pure mischief and recklessness, and totally disregarded all camp discipline. Yet in this land of defiles, caverns, and marshes their aid was too precious to be dispensed with, and remonstrance was practically useless.

The pursuit of Border marauders was often followed by the injured party and his friends with bloodhounds and bugle‐horn, and was called the _hot‐ trod_. If his dog could trace the scent, he was entitled to follow the invaders into the opposite kingdom, which practice often led to further bloodshed. A sure way of stopping the dog was to spill blood on the track; and a legend of Wallace’s adventurous life relates a terrible instance of this. An Irishman in Wallace’s train was slain by the Scottish fugitive, and when the English came up with their hounds their pursuit was baffled. But poetical justice required some counterbalancing doom, and accordingly the legend tells us that, when Wallace took refuge in the lonely tower of Gask, and fancied himself safe, he was speedily disturbed by the blast of a horn. It was midnight. He sent out attendants, cautiously to reconnoitre, but they could see nothing. When he was left alone again, the summons was repeated, and, sword in hand, he went down to face the unknown. At the gate of the tower stood the headless spectre of Fawdoim, the murdered man. Wallace, in unearthly terror, fled up into the tower, tore open a window, and leaped down fifteen feet to the ground to continue his flight as best he could. Looking back to Gask, he saw the tower on fire, and the form of his victim, dilated to an immense size, standing on the battlements, holding in his hand a blazing rafter.

The system of signals by beacon‐fires was common on the Borders. Smugglers and their friends have now become the only remaining heirs to this practice, which was once that in use by the noblest warriors of Gaelic race in either island. The origin of this custom was perfectly lawful; indeed, the Scottish Parliament, in 1445, directed that one bale or beacon‐fagot should be warning of the approach of the English in any manner; two bales, that they are coming indeed; four bales blazing beside each other, that the enemy are in great force. A Scotch historian tells us that in later times these beacons consisted of a long and strong tree set up, with a long iron pole across the head of it, and an iron brander fixed on a stalk in the middle of it for holding a tar‐barrel.

It was a custom on the Border, and indeed in the Highlands also, for those passing through a great chieftain’s domains to repair to the castle in acknowledgment of the chief’s authority, explain the purpose of their journey, and receive the hospitality due to their rank. To neglect this was held discourtesy in the great and insolence in the inferior traveller; indeed, so strictly was this etiquette insisted upon by some feudal lords that Lord Oliphaunt is said to have planted guns at his Castle of Newtyle in Angus, so as to command the high‐road, and compel all passengers to perform this act of homage. Sir Walter Scott, in his _Provincial Antiquities_, has hunted up a curious instance of the non fulfilment of this custom. The Lord of Crichtoun Castle, on the Tyne, heard that Scott of Buccleugh was to pass his dwelling on his return from court. A splendid banquet was prepared for the expected guest, who nevertheless rode past the castle, neglecting to pay his duty‐visit. Crichtoun was terribly incensed, and pursued the discourteous traveller with a body of horse, made him prisoner, and confined him for the night in the castle dungeon. He and his retainers, meanwhile, feasted on the good cheer that had been provided, and doubtless made many valiant boasts against the imprisoned lord. But with morning cometh prudence. A desperate feud with a powerful clan was not desirable, and such would infallibly have been the result of so rough a proceeding. Indeed, it would have justified the Buccleugh in biting his glove or his thumb—a gesture indicative on the Border of a resolution of mortal revenge for a serious insult. So, to put matters right, Crichtoun not only delivered his prisoner and set him in the place of honor at his board the following day, but himself retired into his own dungeon, where he remained as many hours as his guest had done. This satisfaction was accepted and the feud averted.

The Borderers had a rough, practical kind of symbolism in vogue among them; and, though they were not afraid of calling a spade a spade, yet loved a significant allegory. It is told of one of the marauding chiefs, whose castle was a very robber’s den, that his mode of intimating to his retainers that the larder was bare, and that they must ride for a supply of provisions, was the appearance on the table of a pair of clean spurs in a covered dish. Like many brigand chiefs, this Scott of Harden had a wife of surpassing beauty, famed in song as the “Flower of Yarrow.” Some very beautiful pastoral songs are attributed to a young captive, said to have been carried as an infant to this eagle’s nest, built on the brink of a dark and precipitous dell. He himself tells the story of how “beauteous Mary, Yarrow’s fairest flower, rescued him from the rough troopers who brought him into the courtyard of the castle.”

“Her ear, all anxious, caught the wailing sound:
With trembling haste, the youthful matron flew,
And from the hurried heaps an infant drew.

Of milder mood the gentle captive grew,
Nor loved the scenes that scared his infant view,

He lived o’er Yarrow’s Flower to shed the tear,
To strew the holly‐leaves o’er Harden’s bier.

He, nameless as the race from which he sprung,
Saved other names, and left his own unsung.”

Work and pleasure were sometimes mingled in those royal expeditions called a chase, which had so little to distinguish them from regular Border forays. Law and no law were so curiously tangled together that each bore nearly the same outward features as the other—features especially romantic, which both have now equally lost. Ettrick Forest, now a mountainous range of sheep‐walks, was anciently a royal pleasure‐ground. The hunting was an affair of national importance, and in 1528 James V. of Scotland “made proclamation to all lords, barons, gentlemen, landward‐men, and freeholders to pass with the king where he pleased, to danton _the thieves_ of Teviotdale, Annandale, and Liddesdale (we have heard this expression before in another mouth), and other parts of that country, and also warned all gentlemen that had good dogs to bring them, that he might hunt in the said country as he pleased.”

A very interesting account is given by one Taylor, a poet, of the mode in which these huntings were conducted in the Highlands. This, however, is a sketch of a later day than that in which the moss‐troopers were at their best, but many of the characteristics of the scene suggest the earlier and hardly yet forgotten time of the true Borderers. He begins by enumerating the many “truly noble and right honorable lords” who were present, and gives a detailed description of the dress which they wore in common with the peasantry, “as if Lycurgus had been there and made laws of equality.” The dress is the Highland costume of to‐day—a dress that has never changed since at least the beginning of this century. The English poet evidently finds it very primitive, and takes no notice of the difference of color or of mixing of color that distinguishes the various tartans. He says: “As for their attire, any man of what degree so‐ever who comes amongst them must not disdain to wear it; for if they do, then they will disdain to hunt or willingly to bring in their dogs; but if men be kind to them and be in their habit, then they are conquered with kindness, and the sport will be plentiful.” The gathering is of some fourteen or fifteen hundred or more men—a little city or camp. Small cottages built on purpose to lodge in, and called _lonquhards_, are here for the chiefs, the kitchens whereof are always on the side of a bank. A formidable list of provisions follows; there are “many kettles and pots boiling, and many spits turning and winding, with great variety of cheer, as venison baked, sodden, rost, and stewed beef, mutton, goats, kids, hares, fresh salmon, pigeons, hens, capons, chickens, partridges, muir‐coots (water‐fowl), heath‐cocks, capercailzies and ptarmigans, good ale, sacke, white and claret (red) tent, or allegant, with the most potent _aqua‐vitæ_. All these, and more than these, we had continually in superfluous abundance, caught by falconers, fowlers, fishers, and brought by my lord’s tenants and purveyors to victual our camp, which consisteth of fourteen or fifteen hundred men and horses. The manner of the hunting is this: Five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, and they do disperse themselves divers ways, and seven, eight, or ten miles compass; they do bring or chase in the deer, in many herds (two, three, or four hundred in a herd), to such or such a place as the noblemen shall appoint them; then, when day is come, the lords and gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the said places, sometimes wading up to the middles through burns (streams) and rivers, and then they, being come to the place, do lie down upon the ground till those foresaid scouts, which are called the _tinkhell_, do bring down the deer. But as the proverb says of a bad cook, so these _tinkhell_ men do lick their own fingers; for, besides their bows and arrows, which they carry with them, we can hear now and then a harquebuss or a musket go off, which they do seldom discharge in vain. Then after we had stayed there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us (their heads making a show like a wood), which, being followed close by the _tinkhell_, are chased down into the valley where we lay; then all the valley, on each side, being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are all let loose, as occasion serves, upon the herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows, durks, and daggers, in the space of two hours, fourscore fat deer were slain, which after are disposed of, some one way and some another, twenty and thirty miles, and more than enough left for us, to make merry withal at our rendezvous.”

Doubtless the scene must have been very picturesque before the _battue_ began; but as sport what could be more unsatisfactory? For once modern customs seem to excel ancient ones, and the Scotch deer‐stalker of to‐day, in his arduous, solitary walk over the moors and through the forests, is a much more enviable personage than the high and mighty huntsman of King James’ train. The best sport recorded in this curious narrative was the result of the unauthorized shots heard in the distance, when the _tinkhell_ men could not resist the temptation of “licking their own fingers.”

It was the result of all these centuries of wild life and romantic lawlessness that made Scotland so safe a retreat for the unfortunate Prince Charlie after the last stand had been so loyally and unsuccessfully made at Culloden in 1745. Personal fidelity to a beloved chieftain, and an habitual disregard of all laws of the “Southron” that clashed with their own immemorial customs, made of the Scottish people the most perfect partisans in the world. Even at this day, when they are famed for their thriftiness, their amenableness to law, their eminently peaceful qualities, a strong undercurrent of romance lies at the bottom of their surface tranquillity. The organization of clanship has disappeared, but the feeling that put life into that system is itself living yet. The humblest Scotsman is a born genealogist, and privately considers the blood of the laird under whose protection or in whose service he lives as immeasurably _bluer_ than that of the German royal family that sits in the high places of England; and a characteristic instance of the clinging affection with which the national nomenclature of rank is still looked upon by the Scottish peasantry was afforded not many years ago, when the tenants of Lord Breadalbane were required to conform to modern usage, and address their master as “my lord.” “What!” they exclaimed, “call the Breadalbane _my lord_, like any paltry Southron chiel (fellow)?” They thought—and rightly, as it seems to us—that the old appellation, “_the_ Breadalbane,” as if he were sovereign on his own lands, and the only one of the name who needed no title to distinguish him from others of his kin, was the only fitting one for their chief. The English title of marquis was nothing to that.

The superstitions of the Border, those of early times and those whose traces remain even to this day, are another interesting phase in the annals of the moss‐troopers, but they would occupy more space than we have now at command. We will close this sketch by quoting an old saying that shows that some at least of the Border chieftains, doubtless through the influence of their wives, had not relinquished all reverent belief in the things of the world to come. They may not always have acted up to what they believed; and indeed so wise a maxim as the following, if carried out in practice to its furthest limit, would have caused the pious Borderer to retire altogether from his adventurous “profession,” unless, indeed, the obscure sentence in the second line of the couplet, “Keep well the rod,” could have been twisted into an injunction to him to become an embodiment of poetical justice in the eyes of less discriminating moss‐troopers. The inscription is found over an arched door at Branxholm or Branksome Castle, and is in old black‐letter type:

In varld. is. nocht. nature. hes. vrought. yat. sal. lest. ay.

Tharefore. serve. God. keip. veil. ye. rod. thy. fame. sal. nocht.
dekay. (62)

Assunta Howard. IV. Convalescence.

“I have almost made up my mind to go back to bed again, and play possum. Truly, I find but little encouragement in my tremendous efforts to get well, in the marked neglect which I am suffering from the feminine portion of my family. Clara is making herself ridiculous by returning to the days of her first folly, against which I protest to unheeding ears, and of which I wash my hands. Come here, Assunta; leave that everlasting writing of yours, and enliven the ‘winter of my discontent’ by the ‘glorious summer’ of your presence, of mind as well as of body.”

Mr. Carlisle certainly looked very unlike the neglected personage he described himself to be. He was sitting in a luxurious chair near the open window; and he had but to raise his eyes to feast them upon the ever‐ changing, never‐tiring beauties of the Alban hills, while the soft spring air was laden with the fragrance of many gardens. Beside him were books, flowers, and cigars—everything, in short, which could charm away the tediousness of a prolonged convalescence. And it must be said, to his credit, that he bore the monotony very well _for a man_—which, it is to be feared, is after all damning his patience with very faint praise.

Assunta raised her eyes from her letter, and, smiling, said:

“Ingratitude, thy name is Severn Carlisle! I wish Clara were here to give you the benefit of one of her very womanly disquisitions on man. You would be so effectually silenced that I should have a hope of finishing my letter in time for the steamer.”

“Never mind the letter,” said Mr. Carlisle. “Come here, child; I am pining to have you near me.”

Assunta laughed, as she replied:

“Would it not do just as well if I should give you the opera‐glass, and let you amuse yourself by making believe bring me to you?”

“Pshaw! Assunta, I want you. Put away your writing. You know very well that it is two days before the steamer leaves, and you will have plenty of time.” And Mr. Carlisle drew a chair beside his own.

Assunta did know all about it; but, now that the invalid was so much better, she was trying to withdraw a little from any special attentions. She felt that, under the circumstances, it would not be right to make herself necessary to his comfort; she did not realize how necessary he thought her to his very life. However, though she would skirmish with and contradict him, she had never yet been able sufficiently to forget how near he had been to death to actually oppose him. Besides, she had not thought him looking quite as strong this morning; so she put the unfinished letter back in the desk, and, taking her work‐basket, sat down beside her guardian, and tried to divert him from herself by pointing out the wonderful loveliness of the view. His face did have a weary expression, which his quondam nurse did not fail to perceive. She at once poured out a glass of wine, and, handing it to him, said:

“Tell me the truth, my friend; you do not feel very well to‐day?”

“I do not feel quite as strong as Samson,” he replied; “but you forget, Dalila, how you and the barber have shorn off the few locks the fever left me. Of course my strength went too.”

“Well, fortunately,” said Assunta, “there are no gates of Gaza which require immediate removal, and no Philistines to be overcome.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said Mr. Carlisle, putting down the wine‐ glass. “There are some things harder to overcome than Philistines, and some citadels so strong as to bid defiance to Samson, even in the full glory of his wavy curls. What chance is there, then, for him now, cruel Dalila?”

Assunta wilfully misunderstood him, and, taking her work from her pretty basket, she answered, laughing:

“Well, one thing is very certain: your illness has not left you in the least subdued. Clara and I must begin a course of discipline, or by the time your brown curls have attained their usual length you will have become a regular tyrant.”

“Give me your work, _petite_,” said Mr. Carlisle, gently disengaging it from her hand. “I want this morning all to myself. And please do not mention Clara again. I cannot hear her name without thinking of that miserable Sinclair business. It is well for him that I am as I am, until I have had time to cool. I am not very patient, and I have an irresistible longing to give him a horse‐whipping. It is a singular psychological fact that Clara has been gifted with every womanly attraction but common sense. But I believe that even you Catholics allow to benighted heretics the plea of invincible ignorance as an escape from condemnation; so we must not be too severe in our judgment of my foolish sister.”

“Hardly a parallel case,” said Assunta, smiling.

“I grant it,” replied her guardian; “for in my illustration the acceptance of the plea, so you hold, renders happiness possible to the heretic, to whom a ‘little knowledge’ would have been so ‘dangerous a thing’ as to lose him even a chance among the elect; whereas Clara’s invincible ignorance of the world, of human nature, and in particular of the nature of George Sinclair, serves only to explain her folly, but does not prevent the inevitable evil consequences of such a marriage. But enough of the subject. Will you not read to me a little while? Get Mrs. Browning, and let us have ‘Lady Geraldine,’ if you will so far compassionate a man as to make him forget that he is at sword’s points with himself and all the world, the exception being his fair consoler. Thank you, _petite_,” he continued, as Assunta brought the book. “There is plenty of trash and an incomprehensible expression or two in the poem; but, as a whole, I like it, and the end, the vision, would redeem it, were it ten times as bad. Well, I too have had a vision! Do you know, Assunta, that the only thing I can recall of those weeks of illness is your dear form flitting in and out of the darkness? But—may I dare say it?—the vision had in it a certain tenderness I do not find in the reality. I could almost believe in your doctrine of guardian angels, having myself experienced what their ministry might be.”

“I am afraid,” interrupted Assunta, “that your doctrine would hardly stand, if it has no other basis than such very human evidence. Shall I begin?”

“No, wait a minute longer,” said Mr. Carlisle. “ ‘Lady Geraldine’ will keep. I wish to put a question to your sense of justice. When I was sick, and almost unconscious, and entirely unappreciative, there was a person—so the doctor tells me—who lavished attentions upon me, counted nothing too great a sacrifice to be wasted upon me. But now that I am myself again, and longing to prove myself the most grateful of men, on the principle that ‘gratitude is a lively sense of favors _to come_,’ that person suddenly retires into the solitude of her own original indifference (to misquote somewhat grandiloquently), and leaves me wondering on what hidden rock my bark struck when I thought the sea all smooth and shining, shivering my reanimated hopes to atoms. But,” he added, turning abruptly towards her, and taking in his the hand which rested on the table beside him, “you saved my life. Bless you, child, and remember that the life you have saved is yours, now and always.”

The color had rushed painfully into Assunta’s face, but her guardian instantly released her hand, and she answered quietly:

“It really troubles me, Mr. Carlisle, that you should attach so much importance to a mere service of duty and common humanity. I did no more than any friend so situated would have had a right to claim at my hands. Your thanks have far outweighed your indebtedness.”

“Duty again!” exclaimed Mr. Carlisle bitterly. “I wish you had let me die. I want no _duty_ service from you; and you shall be gratified, for I do _not_ thank you for my life on those conditions. You spare no opportunity to let me understand that I am no more to you than all the rest of the world. Be it so.” And he impatiently snatched the _Galignani_ from the table, and settled himself as if to read.